The Playstation 4 – It’s official

It’s been on the lips of gamers for months now, with Sony cryptically teasing something over the last couple of weeks, as the next generation of gaming prepares to be unveiled. Well wonder no more, because project Orbis AKA the Playstation 4, is real.

Last night in New York City, and this morning technically for people who like to point out my complete lack of time zone understanding, the PS4 was officially announced. Not unveiled, mind you, but announced. Designer Mark Cerny took the stage for the event, and described the PS4 as “A powerful and accessible system”. Cerny also claimed that the PS4 will have "A deep feature set to support the ongoing evolution of gaming itself."

And the hardware does indeed sound pretty heavy, for a console that is. 8 gigabytes of RAM, a “massive” hard drive, two teraflops of power and the choice to switch the device into a low power state. Moving onto the input devices, those rumours about the new controller turned out to be true. The prototype controller sports a redesign more in line with current options, such as more natural palm rests, what looks to be grippier triggers, share buttons and a touchpad in the center.

The PS4 will also have instant on and off states by the press of a button, as a secondary custom chip will keep downloads and uploads going, enabling games to be played and streamed while the console handles other functions. Streaming games seems to be the big hook here, as the Gaikai partnership with Sony unveiled some tech last night that allows downloaded titles to be played while they’re being downloaded.

Streaming gameplay footage and spectating on the networks of other people playing various titles will also be supported. Sony is also making a push for the Vita to be relevant, as PS4 games will somehow be playable on that device with a function that they’ve dubbed “remote play”. Sony claims that they’re making an effort to make every single PS4 game, Vita playable at the end of the day.

The newly designed Sony Network will also be able to learn about player preferences, using metrics to gauge interest in certain games, with social networking crossing over onto this platform as well. As for backwards compatibility, Gaikai CEO Dave Perry mentioned that Sony was working on bringing the library of Playstation 1,2 and 3 games to the new console via Playstation Cloud services, which would be rolled in phases during the lifespan of the system.

Sony also hyped the fact that their next console would be aiming to kill the waiting times caused by uploads, downloads and installations, something which many a fan will be pleased to hear. Games announced for the console include Killzone: Shadow Fall, Infamous: Second Son, DriverClub, The Witness, Deep Down, The Knack, a new Final Fantasy, Destiny, Watch Dogs and…Diablo 3. More on those later.

The Playstation 4 looks like a solid console so far. There’s more than enough powerful hardware on offer to produce some stunning games, and the Gaikai partnership loos set to pay off with some innovative technology that puts gaming first, and mandatory waiting second. There’s no price tag on the console yet, but it’s safe to say that gamers have enough time to save up for the holiday season release.

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Because he's the writer that Lazygamer deserves, but not the one it actually needs right now.
So we'll hunt him. Because he can't take it. Because he's not a hero. He's a loud-mouthed journalist, a watchful procrastinator. A dork knight.

Looking good? Who bribed you this morning!!! It’s a high-end PC as the hardware developers have stated.

Sir Captain Rincethis

WIN 🙂

ALKi1234

DDR5 8GIGS…..Holy shait. developers are probably so hung over this morning.

Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

Lol most likely. What bothers me though is they are using an x-86 chipset (32bits) which means that only 4GB or RAM can be addressed at any given time. If more needs to be used it needs to start swopping out. This can cause a bit of lag as the system swops out the RAM address files.

Hope this doesn’t complicate development for the devs by them needing to handle complex memory management again.

Sean Carbutt

I didn’t see any news on the “architecture” of the machine, so pray tell, how hell do
you know what Sony are going to use or not going to use? Hearsay is a very dangerous way to make unsubstantiated statements as if they were facts. I am also quite sure that there is a rather large “think tank” of the best rocket scientists that they can get that will sort out any possible issues

This image was shown during the presentation at some point (Didn’t watch it myself but the guy who did I trust rather well as he’s not the kind to make up stuff. Gave a very good overview of the whole presentation as well)

Ah! Well that’s ok then. The original image I saw left out the rather important “-64” tag.

Well, then this machine is probably going to fly. 8GB memory on a device that has very little overheads in terms of OS and all is going to make devs very, very happy.

FoxOneZA

Just for clarification though a 32-bit chipset can do more than 4gigs of memory.

Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

Yes and no. No, it can’t address more than 4GB of memory at a time. But yes it can use more. It will just need to swop it out.

Think of it as a 4 door garage. It can only hold 4 cars, but it doesn’t mean you can’t own more. But to put them in the garage you would need to swop out your outside one with one inside.

Same on any 32bit system trying to use more than 4GB. It can, but not in one go. It would need to keep anything above 4GB seperate and when it needs it, swop it out with the current block.

Hope that made sense. Difficult to explain it in easy terms lol

undercoverMunky

I have no idea why Sir Rants-a-lot’s comment was down voted??? It’s a valid point!

mornelithe

Downvote trolls are strong sometimes. An announcement from a major hardware manufacturer is bound to draw them out. Sad that they’re not man enough to back up their down vote with actual…you know, words.

Sir Captain Rincethis

Because there are 12 year old SONY fanboys on the site that will downvote ANYTHING that might be even mildly negative about a company they have sold their PETTY souls to. I think it’s all about their tiny dick sizes, and their need to over compensate 😉

stayed up and watched the stream, feel like death!! but man, It’s really exciting! Watch Dogs, oh the hype,looks like it’s got amazing potential (even saw the ingress logo so was like wha???) , Killzone look stunning and InFamous is looking great, I’m not sure about gakai , as we all know, in South Africa, Internet is quite the luxury or should I say, Steady Internet. but hey, I’m still excited and I can’t wait for GDC and E3!!!!

O no, that fuzzy feeling of “I must have !” is back…got to go hide my credit card

Darth_Clericus_The_Ultimate

DAT GRAPHICS ENGINE…….

Sir Captain Rincethis

Awesome, looks like a BEAST! Why does the controller look like it was put together using tape and painted wood though?

Darth_Clericus_The_Ultimate

Haha so true. But I am willing to give it a try before judging it completely

Sir Captain Rincethis

Oh, the machine looks bloody amazing. 8 gig multi us memory, SWEET! But the controller, par the touch pad and share buttons looks VERY similar to, well, all the others… I was expecting a leap in evolution, like the console itself…

Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

Must be a Minmitar model (Sorry, Eve-Online reference)

Sir Captain Rincethis

Ah, sir, do not worry. I was part of that universe for 3 year while living in China. And WHAT a universe. 🙂

Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

Yeah, I miss it. Hey, I wonder if DUST will be playable on the PS4 when it launches?

Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

Yeah, I miss it. Hey, I wonder if DUST will be playable on the PS4 when it launches?

Sir Captain Rincethis

Mmm, not sure. Would assume the developers would want to spend time working out the new developer’s kit?

Sir Captain Rincethis

Mmm, not sure. Would assume the developers would want to spend time working out the new developer’s kit?

Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

Probably. But just imagine what they could do gfx wise!

mornelithe

For me, I know the graphics will come, it’s part of the natural progression of games. What I thought was more compelling were things like the Havok Engine doing the 1 million object demo. That was pretty insane

Damn it’s been a good night lol =) 5:40am….guess I should forget sleep and just go straight to the coffee hah.

mornelithe

I actually really like the controller, if you see it from the front, the triggers are more pronounced, and there’s a bitchin’ blue LED for motion stuff. But yeah, I’m pretty pleased with it. I wasn’t looking for them to reinvent the wheel. Just wanted to see some refinements/innovation and it looks like they have.

mornelithe

I actually really like the controller, if you see it from the front, the triggers are more pronounced, and there’s a bitchin’ blue LED for motion stuff. But yeah, I’m pretty pleased with it. I wasn’t looking for them to reinvent the wheel. Just wanted to see some refinements/innovation and it looks like they have.

Sir Captain Rincethis

You honestly get a downvote for that? Yeah, I think I need to see a real controller, bad angle I think 🙂

mornelithe

It’s ok, I don’t come here for up votes. I come here to talk games! If children are too afraid to talk about their disagreements logically and coherently, hell, I’ll take the down vote, as long as their keep their mouths shut. lol =)

I’m betting there’ll be another article specifically on the controller here pretty soon (ok, so I saw the article was there already lol), maybe that’ll have some extra angles.

Sir Captain Rincethis

Yeah, just saw it and retracted my comment on controller. It does look a lot more rugged, better grip, and has some very nice features methinks! Shame, all the fanboys comments on how crap live chat was with the xbox are going to have to be deleted. I see hours of their lives wasted 🙂 And agreed, I’m not here to worry about downvotes, but to see whether there is any intelligence on this planet (so far leaning more towards a negative).

Sir Captain Rincethis

Yeah, just saw it and retracted my comment on controller. It does look a lot more rugged, better grip, and has some very nice features methinks! Shame, all the fanboys comments on how crap live chat was with the xbox are going to have to be deleted. I see hours of their lives wasted 🙂 And agreed, I’m not here to worry about downvotes, but to see whether there is any intelligence on this planet (so far leaning more towards a negative).

Sir Captain Rincethis

Yeah, just saw it and retracted my comment on controller. It does look a lot more rugged, better grip, and has some very nice features methinks! Shame, all the fanboys comments on how crap live chat was with the xbox are going to have to be deleted. I see hours of their lives wasted 🙂 And agreed, I’m not here to worry about downvotes, but to see whether there is any intelligence on this planet (so far leaning more towards a negative).

josua

if they said ‘social integration’ or ‘share on facebook’ one more time………… murders.
and that share button on the remote, i mean really, yeah let everyone know you’ve been playing for 8 hours straight and want to find people to play some more with.

josua

if they said ‘social integration’ or ‘share on facebook’ one more time………… murders.
and that share button on the remote, i mean really, yeah let everyone know you’ve been playing for 8 hours straight and want to find people to play some more with.

mornelithe

Eh? From what we’ve heard, the share button will only post up to 15 minutes of footage, real-time though, so you can share while you’re playing and it’ll upload simultaneously.

Agree on the social integration though, I mean, I’m sure someone has to be interested in it, but not me. Though, I suppose if you can do scene edits and compilations like in GTAIV, that could be amusing to play around with.

FoxOneZA

So this must be the new Sony then. They’ve played it safe this time round. Too safe maybe? Still beats the mumbo-jumbo from the PS3 announcement.

Mmm, yeah, that’d be awesome….and how about a functioning Skyrim?!?!??! Zomg!

mornelithe

As I said after the novel I wrote on the other page, I think Sony put probably the best foot forward they could, sans a price cut for their current hardware (both Vita and PS3). If they’re truly going to be pushing the PS Vita integration (which they say was done from the design phase of the PS4), they’re going to need to bring it down in price in order for people to seriously pick it up.

For those who already have it, that’s one thing, but for those who don’t…buying a Vita and a PS4 would likely exceed most peoples budgets. So, I’m looking to see a price cut there in the future.

Beyond that, the tech demo’s, trailers, and in-game video we saw last night was pretty intense. My noteworthy moments were the showcasing of the million object Havok demo, Quantics new engine and their absolutely astounding character models (the demo showed only a head, but the head was probably the closest to the uncanny valley I’ve ever seen…the face was clearly able to show complex emotions…fantastic), the UE4 engine looked good, Killzone appears to have taken some serious leaps forward, Knack looks like a fun platformer, and The Witness is clearly a throwback to games like Myst (Very excited for this). I was already hyped to hell for Watch Dogs, this didn’t change my mind in the slightest oh and the Panta Rhei engine from Capcom was quite noteworthy also.

Altogether, it looks like Sony has put the errors of the PS3 behind them, and really worked to put out a product that not only consumers, but developers can embrace as well. This is a great start for a new generation for Sony.

Agreed, Sony really did well and you can actually see they listened to not only the consumers but developers too, I see good things for Sony if this is their approach, I’m very impressed by the conference

PS3 games will be streamed via Gaikai, which with our bandwith limits is an issue. I doubt you will have to pay for the games again, since any game already linked to your PSN account should be available as it would be in Steam.

RPS’s comments section on hardware provides a lot of information, as well as a lot of fanfiction. It’s worth the read.

Anon A Mouse

Anything about always online? TLDR and all that you know.

mornelithe

I saw nothing about always online, obviously access to the PSN would require online connection. Are you referring to the 2nd hand games rumor? Apparently Sony shot that down last night, not at their presentation, but somewhere else.

Someone posted a link to an article about it, I’ll see if I can find it.

Aussious

Wow I am really exited about this, With the likes of Mass Effect now being multiplatform there is absolutely no reason for me to stick to Xbox… Out the box the 360 was probably the most hardcore console ever released Gears,Mass Effect, Achievements,Arcade and leader boards, now are rarely recognized my once beloved box fucking Kinect this, Facebook that and all the other social media and entertainment crap that has nothing to do with gaming…

gamer

Old article I know but important to note it’s unified GDDR5. DDR5 isn’t even being spec’d now ddr4 is being jdec standardized i’m sure they started on ddr5. Point is sony used what’s available and affordable but good. The biggest bottleneck to a apu (any integrated gpu) is memory bandwidth. Add all the extra transistors you want won’t help. Sony realizes this so they used gddr5 which is faster then ddr3 for both system and graphics ram. Since it’s unidentified it can be dynamically allocated to say more system ram in a game (5gb system 3gb graphics) or more graphics in another (4gb system 4gb graphics) and many different ratios as needed. pc games usually use 1gb ram some using 2gb typically.

there will be higher performance from the ps4 gddr5 vs same amd apu in pc with ddr3.

downside gddr5 costs more but ps4 costs less then xbox one so your getting more high cost hardware for less, ps4 used 1 higher model cpu (apu) then xbox one. The other difference is a nix based os with opengl (ps4) vs xbox one with Microsoft os and dx.